The routine at the doctor’s office used to end by patients forking over the $20 or $35 co-pay at the receptionist’s desk. Weeks later, patients could expect a letter in the mail from their insurers, filled with inexplicable details regarding how much more the patient had to pay—10 percent of one set of charges, 50 percent of another, …

In Germany the government-promoted auto boom is gradually coming to an end. Thanks to cash for clunkers (Abwrackprämie) the number of new-car sales in July was, at 340,000 vehicles, still 30% higher than the previous year’s level, reported the Federal Motor Vehicle Office …

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has proposed to make cross-town Manhattan buses free, but not necessarily because he wants to give riders a financial leg up. He’s worried about how slow the buses are. The theory is that if riders don’t have to fumble around for their MetroCards, the buses could “speed” along through cross-town traffic.

One of the nicer effects of the credit crunch has been less junk mail from card companies looking to sign you up. Is that trend ending? The good folks at Synovate, a firm that tracks who mails what, made this chart. There was a long, hard fall in the number of credit card offers going out—but that drop slowed substantially in the …

Sell-by dates, schmell-by dates. The discount, or salvage, grocery store is filled with merchandise that’s marked with sell-by dates that came and passed sometime before the recession was called a recession. You know what? The food inside most super-packaged containers is still fine—and it’s often 50 percent cheaper than the stuff in …

To promote three new salads (cranberry pecan chicken salad, baja chicken salad, prime rib & bleu salad), Denny’s is offering them for free—with the purchase of another entrée and two beverages. The offer is valid through August 9, and a coupon is required. Print it here.

Economist Dick Thaler has a new FT opinion piece that says nice things about (and quotes extensively from) The Myth of the Rational Market. (Thanks, Dick!) In it, he makes the case that the efficient market hypothesis consists of two main ideas, “No Free Lunch” and “The Price is Right,” that have met very different fates over the past …

Is solar power in your future? The combo of new government tax credits and incentives and manufacturers dropping prices to entice customers in a down market means that it’s less expensive than ever to equip your home with solar panels. That doesn’t mean it’s cheap. That also doesn’t mean solar power makes sense in all homes and …